| SAS Companion for the CMS Environment |
Under CMS, SAS provides a mechanism for accessing system
variables that have been created with the CMS GLOBALV command. You can access
GLOBALV variables directly from SAS by using either the %SYSGET macro function
or the SYSGET DATA step function.
The group name and variable name can be any that are
valid for the CMS GLOBALV command (see the VM/ESA CMS Command Reference). If you omit the group name, the variable is extracted from the group
SASV7 if it is found there, or else from the default group UNNAMED. If the
variable has not been set via GLOBALV, SYSGET or %SYSGET returns an error.
SYSGET uses the EXECCOMM interface and therefore the
length of the variable name is limited to 250 characters. GLOBALV imposes
a maximum length of 255 characters on the variable's value. The full length
is returned by SYSGET or %SYSGET if the SAS variable is assigned a sufficient
length. Otherwise the value returned by SYSGET or %SYSGET is truncated to
the SAS variable's length, which is 200 characters by default.
- CAUTION:
- Using SYSGET or %SYSGET can replace the value of an existing
variable in your SAS EXEC.
SYSGET and %SYSGET
use the EXECCOMM interface, which assigns variables in the SAS EXEC. If the
variable you assign with SYSGET or %SYSGET has the same name as an existing
variable in the currently active EXEC, the existing variable will receive
the value specified by SYSGET or %SYSGET. This change to a global variable
could adversely affect other aspects of your SAS session.
![[cautend]](../common/images/cautend.gif)
When you use the SYSGET
DATA step function to access
system variables, you must enclose the string that specifies the group name
and the variable name in single quotes:
|
SYSGET('group-name variable-name')
|
For example, if the group
name is MINE and the variable
name is TIME, your DATA step might look like this:
data test;
x=sysget('mine time');
. . . more lines
of data . . .
run;
When you use the %SYSGET macro
function to access system variables,
do not enclose the string that specifies the group name and the variable name
in single quotes:
|
%SYSGET(group-name variable-name)
|
For example, if the group name is MINE and the
variable
name is TIME, your code might look like this:
%let x=%sysget(mine time);
Copyright © 1999 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
